Position-Sensitive Fission Counter for in-Core Flux Profile Monitoring

A prototype model of a position-sensitive fission counter (PSFC) was developed for power-range flux profile monitoring in light-water reactor cores. The flux profile is measured by delay-line position encoding and time interval decoding of individual fission pulses from 11 small fission counters incorporated along a coaxial transmission line. Significant improvements over currently used flux profile monitors are the 33-cm spatial resolution of the 3.5-m-long PSFC and the requirement for only one cable penetration into the reactor pressure vessel.